How to install a private NPM module without my own registry?

I've taken some shared code and put it in an NPM module, one I don't want to upload to the central registry. The question is, how do I install it from other projects?

The obvious way is probably to set up my own NPM registry, but according to the documentation, that involves a lot of hassle.

Can I just install an NPM module that sits on the local filesystem, or perhaps even from git?

npm install --from-git git@server:project

In your private npm modules add 

"private": true

to your package.json

Then to reference the private module in another module, use this in your package.json

{
    "name": "myapp",
    "dependencies": {
        "private-repo": "git+ssh://git@github.com:myaccount/myprivate.git#v1.0.0",
    }
}


cd somedir
npm install .

or 

npm install path/to/somedir

somedir must contain the package.json inside it.

It knows about git too:

npm install git://github.com/visionmedia/express.git

Can I just install an NPM package that sits on the local filesystem, or perhaps even from git?

Yes you can! From the docs https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/install

A package is:

  • a) a folder containing a program described by a package.json file
  • b) a gzipped tarball containing (a)
  • c) a url that resolves to (b)
  • d) a <name>@<version> that is published on the registry with (c)
  • e) a <name>@<tag> that points to (d)
  • f) a <name> that has a "latest" tag satisfying (e)
  • g) a <git remote url> that resolves to (b)

Isn't npm brilliant?

FWIW: I had problems with all of these answers when dealing with a private organization repository.

The following worked for me:

npm install -S "git+https://username@github.com/orgname/repositoryname.git"

For example:

npm install -S "git+https://blesh@github.com/netflix/private-repository.git"

I'm not entirely sure why the other answers didn't work for me in this one case, because they're what I tried first before I hit Google and found this answer. And the other answers are what I've done in the past.

Hopefully this helps someone else.

I had this same problem, and after some searching around, I found Reggie (https://github.com/mbrevoort/node-reggie). It looks pretty solid. It allows for lightweight publishing of NPM modules to private servers. Not perfect (no authentication upon installation), and it's still really young, but I tested it locally, and it seems to do what it says it should do.

That is... (and this just from their docs)

npm install -g reggie
reggie-server -d ~/.reggie

then cd into your module directory and...

reggie -u http://<host:port> publish 
reggie -u http://127.0.0.1:8080 publish

finally, you can install packages from reggie just by using that url either in a direct npm install command, or from within a package.json... like so

npm install http://<host:port>/package/<name>/<version>
npm install http://<host:port>/package/foo/1.0.0

or.. 

dependencies: {
    "foo": "http://<host:port>/package/foo/1.0.0"
}

Config to install from public Github repository, even if machine is under firewall:

dependencies: {
   "foo": "https://github.com/package/foo/tarball/master"
}

Npm now provides unlimited private hosted modules for $7/user/month used like so

cd private-project
npm login

in your package json set "name": " @username/private-project"

npm publish

then to require your project:

cd ../new-project
npm install --save @username/private-project